Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 78

I was seeing this page(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems#Limits) and thought that not all partitions were needed to be compared and i could in fact remove or hide other file systems which were for example obsolete or not needed. By employing this in all the tables we can avoid over-crowding .Is there any function to do so?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by VIV0411 (talk • contribs)

Hmm... I'm not aware of any simple way to do that, no. If you're willing to get your hands a little dirty in template magic, you could split the table's data into a few subsets, and then populate multiple tables on the fly by

transcluding various portions of the full set. This wouldn't be fully dynamic, though, since you'd need to edit the page to change which data is visible in any given table. From a technical perspective, this is relatively simple, but it does present some practical problems: it makes the table much harder to edit, presents editorial concerns when you sort out which table entries should be visible where, and can be a departure from our usual presentation style. You could use subpages to store the various table views, or use a template like {{hidden}} to let users pick which one they'd like to see, but it's really a bag of worms. Might be worth looking into, though: some of those tables are so massive that they're essentially useless for casual users. Perhaps it would be practical to include a summary table on one page, and a full table on another page? – Luna Santin (talk

) 21:07, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

A lot of new users are using this function (the 'heart' icon on User and User Talk pages) to award themselves barnstars, kittens etc.

Example: User talk:Hb18619

This is not what user talk pages are for, and may irritate other users who genuinely like being sent these messages by others as a welcome or gesture of appreciation.

Can this function be partially disabled so these messages can only be sent to other users, and not to themselves ? . . Mean as custard (talk) 09:14, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

How is it that a user experimenting in their own userspace should annoy anyone? --Jayron32 14:23, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Agreed - in fact, I think users absolutely should be experimenting with the feature in their own userspace before they go try using it on others. Dcoetzee 23:04, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

To be fair, I think Mean as custard meant users that deliberately award themselves stuff and keep it rather than just experimenting and reverting themselves.. But even still.. a little self-love can't hurt ;P -- œ^™ 00:31, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

{{Abuse of Awards}}? {{Abuse of WikiSelfLove}}? I'm sure the church lady has something to say about that. But as long as there is a notion of Abuse of Twinkle ... --Lexein (talk) 19:56, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Reality check: User talk:Hb18619 gave themselves one (1) Civility Award. Having raised the bar on themselves, we can heretofore expect nothing but the finest quality reasoned and polite discussion from this user, or there will be community hell to pay. Nicht war? --Lexein (talk) 20:03, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

• Meh... isn't there anything more important to worry about? LadyofShalott 14:43, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

• Nope. It's the Village Pump. --Lexein (talk) 19:56, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

• Comment From the message in the award at User talk:Hb18619 it seems quite obvious that this user did not award himself a barnstar, but simply tried out one of the many things one can do on Wikipedia, so this is a rather poor example for this proposal. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 18:18, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

In light of the somewhat common requests for closes of various discussions at

It looks good to me. A date parameter might be useful. Various instructions will need updating – I know that

Help:Merging recommend WP:Administrators' noticeboard. Flatscan (talk

) 04:55, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I support the proposed template(s) and category. Agree w/ Flatscan that a date parameter would be helpful.--JayJasper (talk) 05:12, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I have no objection to adding a date parameter, do you have any proposals on how it would be used, or would it just be a date on the tag that wouldn't trigger any additional functionality? Also, it will require a subst: wrapper to automatically date the request, the alternative would be to have the tagger add the date. Monty₈₄₅ 19:19, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I like it, but we need to make very very very clear in the accompanying documentation that most discussions may be closed by any uninvolved user, and that administrators do not carry special privileges with regard to closing discussions. Non admins should be encouraged to patrol the Requests for Close category, and should feel comfortable summarizing and closing discussions. We need to make it clear that this is not just tolerated, but accepted and indeed best practice at Wikipedia. In summary, this template and maintenance category seems like a Good Idea, so long as we make it clear that this is not an administrator function. --Jayron32 19:36, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps an optional admin=yes parameter would be useful, to tweak the display text and/or categorization as needed. Generally, though, I agree that the template looks pretty solid. I could easily see us building up the same sort of infrastructure that we have surrounding templates like {{

editprotected}}, and so on. – Luna Santin (talk

) 20:13, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

The template already has a adminonly=yes parameter that removes the "or Experienced Editor" language from the template, it could certainly add a new category when it does so. See template options. Monty₈₄₅ 20:26, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'm somewhat thinking the template shouldn't mention admins at all unless adminonly is set, but it's a pretty minor quibble. – Luna Santin (talk) 05:45, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

• As someone who has closed a number of very stale discussions that nobody else seemed to want to bother with I like this. I'm not positive it will help get the more complicated closes done in a timely manner, but it's worth a try.
  talk
  ) 21:09, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not an admin, but several times in my wiki-career I've had to make several requests apiece for a discussion to be closed, so I'd support a template. I also think the template (or, actually, probably the category page) should link
  WP:NAC. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs
  ) 04:17, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

  While

  WP:NAC is, as far as I know, the best page we have on non admin closes, it is written with a near complete focus on the closing of deletion discussions. As far as I know, there is not a similar page that goes into much depth on non-admin closes generally, and if anything, non admin closes are given more respect outside of AfD. Monty₈₄₅

  04:30, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

• My opinion closely mirrors Beeblebrox's. The difficult closures will likely remain on the list for weeks. However, requests at the administrators' noticeboard frequently have a long delay of weeks, so this idea is worth trying. I suggest having a table format like the one at Category:Wikipedia semi-protected edit requests, where a link to the discussion, username of close requester, timestamp of the discussion's beginning, timestamp of the close request, and other relevant details are placed in columns. Cunard (talk) 07:53, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I propose that each page has its own search tool allowing that a reader/editor can search just that article for given words and/or phrases. The results having colour-coded highlighting of matched terms ranged from green for "exact" to orange for "similar". This could be further extended to provide a temporary TOC allowing jump-to navigation of the pages matches. The temporary TOC could also float by means of CSS position:fixed; so editors/readers didn't have to scroll up and down in order to use it. The highlighting and/or search-term-TOC could be hidden/shown by clicking a button provided next to the page-search input or on the TOC itself (if provided). An automatic inclusion of this feature could arise when a page exceeds a given length or it could be simply applied to all pages. -- fg^TC 09:15, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Ctrl-F in Windows, Apple-F in Mac. Dunno about Linux. → ROUX ₪ 13:13, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Ctrl+F in Chrome too.

• Not everyone knows this. Many users (especially casual) are not at all web-aware or browser-savvy. I know people for whom the web is a confusing and scary place.
• The search would act only within the article thus it wouldn't highlight sidebar, footer, header or potentially template text.
• Greater functionality could be added to a Wiki specific tool than is available in the browser tools.

-- fg^TC 14:13, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

As above, every browser already has it; besides, it will only encourage sound-bite-reading. Maybe someone could chime in on how expensive/complicated this would be to implement. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 14:36, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

So um... we should include more tools for people who don't know how to use the ones they already have? This makes no sense. None of what you propose would be useful or desirable. → ROUX ₪ 18:31, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Just as an aside to the above details, Apple hasn't used the "Apple Key" for about four years, it is now the command/⌘ key.

talk

) 21:15, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Also the shortcut is to browser functionality not OS. I don't know if all browsers actually have a page-text search feature either (but then that was 1/2 the reason for this suggestion). -- fg^TC 21:34, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I think there has to be a way like AIV/RPP to request revdeletion of obviously offensive material, so I thought it would be a good idea to propose such a way, which I call Requests for Revdeletion. The diff(s) in question should be supplied unless they contain personal information. Just a thought.Jasper Deng (talk) 02:36, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

See

criteria for redaction. These requests generally shouldn't be made on-wiki, though. You can see a list of administrators who have volunteered to help out with these requests at Category:Wikipedia administrators willing to handle RevisionDelete requests. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.}

02:58, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Hey folks,

Maryana and I have been collaborating with some Wikipedians to continue one of the research projects from the summer, namely involving the randomized testing of talk page templates to try and improve them. (If you watch WP:VPT or read the Signpost, you might've seen stuff about it.)

The great thing about doing randomized testing is that we get a more unbiased assessment of our experiment. The bad thing is that in order to do a proper job of crunching these numbers, we need help from people who can read wiki histories accurately and tell us what's going on. Because doing an analysis that throws in, say, BLP vandals with people making simple markup mistakes, is a dumb way to do research. :)

This is where you come in. Obviously no one is better primed to analyze diffs and editing histories than actual editors, so we're looking for a few (3-4, but the more the merrier) volunteers to lend us their experience this week.

I know used the "r" word (research), which makes it sound not really important, but this is a live experiment on the projects. If we do this correctly, then we can do a better job of educating good faith editors, warning away those who cause damage to the encyclopedia, and keeping experienced Wikipedians from getting their user pages vandalized by angry people. ;-)

The system we've got set up for analyzing these diffs is really simple, so let me know either here or on my talk page if you might have an hour or two to spare. (Coordination-wise, you need to have some email address you're okay sharing privately with us, though we won't be sending you mail and it's just fine if it's a throwaway account on Gmail or the like.)

Thanks, Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 21:22, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

• R sounds fine! Special:EmailUser/Nabla - Nabla (talk) 10:40, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
• I'd love to help, Special:EmailUser/Ajraddatz Ajraddatz (Talk) 14:19, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
• Glad to try! --Orange Mike | Talk 14:30, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Looking quickly at az:Vegetarianizm, I observe that the babel links section has little icons marking GAs in other languages, similar to how we do for featured articles (e.g. the German link in Nattō). Why don't we do this systematically? {{Link GA}} exists, and it is used on some pages, but as far as I can tell, it's missing from many pages where it should be placed. I'd like to see a bot add it to all applicable pages, but I don't want to make a bot request without agreement here. Nyttend (talk) 21:28, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

My suspicicion is that GA criteria on the other languages are not trusted. Using the link you provided, the German version is not so far from en GA, but the Esperanto version is. Featured article indication was probably less controversial in this respect. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 22:46, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps, but GA and FA are always going to be with respect to the local Wikipedia. I think systematic linking is a great idea. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:59, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

There's a significant contingent of people that don't even think our own GA ranking carries any weight. I'm not one of them, mind you, but I have to admit that there's a great range in quality within our own GA system. I'm not so sure about this.

Wha?

11:49, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

I think we should either link all of them, or none of them. If we're going to pick and choose, we must have clearly delineated criteria for which Wikipedias are considered "legitimate" (so that Wikipedias that want to be listed have a clear path forward to "legitimacy"). Personally I'd rather just link all of them and let the free market of ideas do its job, so to speak. If the xyzian Wikipedia is poorly written, new editors can work to drive the criteria upward over time. No reason to just shut it out. —Designate (talk) 17:19, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

I was wondering if it is possible to easily (ie make a few changes to a master template or two, rather than edit 100s of cats/templates) to group all of the clean up categories (ie cats in

I'm not clear on what exactly you're trying to do here. If you're just wanting to create

DMCA}} at all. {{Monthly clean-up category

}} would be the one you'd want to look at for that.

As for Category:Monthly clean up category counter, I assume it exists so someone can do {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Monthly clean up category counter}} to find out that 0 monthly cleanup categories currently exist. Anomie⚔ 13:40, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

i'm sorry if this is the wrong section for discussing this proposal; i'm new to the village pump. anyway, i was thinking that it might be helpful to change the "protected from creation" template so that it includes links to all the afds that led up to the article being salted. the reason is that there may be multiple topics that go by the same name, and a new editor who wanted to create an article under a salted name, seeing that template but not understanding how to go through the deletion logs to find out what happened, might be discouraged from creating the article on the different, legitimate topic. this occurred to me because of the deletion discussion on carnism: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Carnism (2nd nomination), where the current article legitimately needs to be salted, but there is a different kind of carnism altogether which may at some point need an article (the details are explained in that discussion). it seems that it wouldn't be so hard to put a statement at the bottom of the template stating that editors wishing to create a new article should read the deletion discussions and explain to the admin from whom they request recreation permission how their new article would differ from previous versions, and have links to the deletion discussion(s) included with it. just a thought, and maybe a way to avoid discouraging some new editors from creating articles that ought to be created. an alternative might be to include in the template an explanation of how to get to the logs and from there to the afd discussions.— alf.laylah.wa.laylah (talk) 15:29, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Just a note here that I started this proposal at

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

No consensus for anything and the thread has gone dead. Feel free to reopen with a new more straightforward proposal. --

(t) (e)

10:58, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

---

This isn't the first time I've been here recently. Back in

Mediation Cabal (see discussion

) to make it more of an intermediate option as opposed to how things are at present (refer to diagram).

Additionally, it's made me think of the issues that content dispute resolution faces at times. Conduct issues have a pretty clear cut method of resolution, whereas content disputes have no lasting resolution. Consensus can change, and that's important. At the same time, there have been a select few disputes in the past that have gone through conventional DR methods numerous amount of times, and have ended up at ArbCom, often because of conduct issues, but at times topic bans or discretionary sanctions don't have the desired effect and the issues with the content continue. Senkaku Islands, Ireland article names, Eastern European disputes and Palestine-Israel articles are a few examples of disputes that have been through the DR processes endlessly both at present and in the past.

This is not a new idea. It's been proposed in the past, with

^{The clock is ticking....}

01:00, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Since one of the referenced userspace drafts is mine, I'm obviously in favor of the idea. While

Signpost, as do ArbCom proceedings so as to draw in as many editors as possible and avoid committee-only decisions. Whether by community consensus or committee decision, decision at this forum would determine the matter for the time being and would be enforceable. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK

) 14:05, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Just rename Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents to Wikipedia:Community forum, because that is all that is. Moreover, I question whether or not "mediation" is suitable in an open wiki environment (as opposed to MedCom, which is more closed). –MuZemike 23:01, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

• We already have a last resort for content disputes. It's called ArbCom. Not sure what the point is here, but it seems to ignore the fact that behavioral and content issues often go hand in hand, therefore it makes sense to have one body that is authorized to deal with both.
  talk
  ) 23:51, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

• • No, not really. I'm actually bringing this here partly on the suggestion of an arbitrator (see
    ^{The clock is ticking....}
    00:08, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Ok, i see where you are coming from, they make decisions about how editors in dispute are to behave, but you are right that they don't usually wade into the dispute itself. I guess I'd like to see a more solid idea of how this would work.

talk

) 18:28, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

There are two possible ways we could do this. Either a dispute goes through the content dispute hierarchy first (Talk page, DRN/3O/MedCab or MedCom) and then ArbCom who will look at any conduct issues and refer any unresolved content issues to this "content committee" or it could be a step taken directly after a MedCab/MedCom case, with strict requirements for the dispute so the new committee doesn't become a free-for-all (Serious discussion must have happened for an extended period of time and all options of resolution have been tried without success.) A modified version of

^{The clock is ticking....}

02:40, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

• I don't think there is a problem here to solve. Content issues, devoid of editorial issues, should be dealt with by: 1) Editing, 2) talk page, 3) WP:3O, 4) WP:RFC. The higher number should be seen as supporting the lower number, with solutions only ever obtained via #1. Perhaps there is room for some structure for RFC? There are various noticeboards that can support, and I think that committed tendentious editors should be restricted in editing in the problem area without reference to the content issue. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:13, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

• • Part of the reason I brought it here was the Senkaku Islands dispute which has been through content DR processes several times over. If a dispute is still unresolved after 2-3 years of conventional DR, we need something new to fix that. Our standard processes also have no way of dealing with civil POV pushing. Is this a radical idea? Of course. But I think by the info I listed at the top of this section, it's needed, at least for those once a year issues that warrant it.
    ^{The clock is ticking....}
    03:29, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

• I agree with the idea of having a semi-systematic way of making a final decision on controversial content issues (final in the sense of, if nothing changes in the real world, nothing changes on Wikipedia); when an edit war drags on for years and years, it's in the encyclopedia's best interests to come to a resolution and put the issue to rest. However, I cannot support this proposal without knowing more details about how this body will work. What, ideally, should their decisions be based on? Like for ArbCom, their decisions are based on Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, etc., but it really comes down to personal judgment and common sense. Why does User X deserve a 1-year ban while User Y only gets admonished? The severity of sanctions is not encoded anywhere in policy; it's just what feels right to the arbiters. Now, a bit of personal opinion is perfectly fine for ArbCom, because ArbCom members (as well as most experienced users) are all pretty mainstream when it comes down to user conduct. Even an ardent deletionist, as long as they understand and uphold our policies, would object to someone mass deleting articles they don't like, for example. The problem for content disputes is, however, that it would be very difficult to find a group of users who are relatively neutral on all political, social, and other controversial issues. Moreover, while our behavioral guidelines cover all of user conduct (yes, all - any leftovers are taken up by
  WP:IAR), we can never hope to create a set of guidelines describing all possible content, simply because the world has too many twists and turns. IAR is fine, but just try moving Republic of Ireland to Ireland unilaterally. IAR means common sense; articles, however, feed on sources. Interpretation of those sources (what to include, what to prioritize, etc.) is what leads to this mess. If a policy or guideline is ambiguous, we hold a discussion to amend it. But the sources are there, and we can't change them. The above is the fundamental difference between conduct and content. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣
  ♠ 08:55, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

• • I agree with the differences in content and conduct disputes, and the complexities and difficulties that convening such a DR body for content issues will create. The reasons you give are sound ones. As Wikipedians we all have personal opinions on things, religion (either religious or not religious) or politically (various broad categories here). One doesn't have to have no opinion on anything to be able to be objective and neutral, they must however have a very sound understanding of the content policies and how they work together (NPOV, RS, V, BLP, UNDUE to name a few) as these are largely how content is governed. I think
    ^{The clock is ticking....}
    10:23, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
• The more time single purpose editors spend arguing, the less time they spend edit warring. In that respect, the status quo works relatively well.

  I think what we need is an alternative to RfC that comes after existing options have failed, in which uninvolved editors try to determine whether there a solution is remotely conceivable, or whether the issue should be recognised as something which is unlikely to ever be resolved. When writing about love and war, religion and politics, life, the universe and everything, it's inevitable that the latter will sometimes be the case. —WFC— 14:35, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

• Would be in support of this idea. Frequently a RfC resolves issues but for cases in which it does not we do need a further mechanism of content resolution.--
  talk · contribs · email
  ) 01:43, 6 October 2011 (UTC)
• Support something being done in this area. ArbCom's current model is not working; content and conduct problems don't always go hand in hand and so dealing with conduct only is inadequate. (To be fair, it's not really the Arbs' fault their model is inadequate; their scope is given to them by the community.) What exactly should be done I don't know (I might think of some more ideas when I'm more lucid), but something should be. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 05:56, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Thoughts by FT2 on content resolution + proposals

The issues that cause content not to be resolved are very well known - as a community we have seen it happen thousands of times. Four issues seem to cause a debate to get really bad. I would like to propose a 4-way framework that would be likely to help.

The problem with "binding content resolution"

1. The risks of "setting content in stone" is huge, this alone is a major concern ("you can't change it, it was agreed by arbitration etc").
2. It makes it hard to improve any "fixed" text later,
3. It creates a prime target for gaming and politiking (eg who gets to make these decisions),
4. We don't want to ditch broad community consensus as our process except in the utmost need.

Issues to design around

• Some topics are inherently difficult because of the question, even if conduct is good. For example: - weighing sources, evaluating what is a "mainstream" view, and issues with genuine multiple answers (naming disputes etc). The process especially needs to help these kinds of question.

• It doesn't take many people to frustrate good debate. We have policies that in theory should work well but rely on good quality participators and very good faith efforts and mutual respect. In heated debates these are easy to break or hard to obtain from all participants.

• We don't have a formal structure to help editors reach consensus in complex issues. So each time there is a "reinventing of the wheel". At Arbitration the answer to many content issues is "you need to try proper multi-stage, carefully planned, consensus-seeking". Several "heavy" content issues got resolved this way but the lesson how to do it (or that it may be needed) hasn't spread.

• It's easy for a newcomer to a topic to demand a rehash of a debate even if there isn't really anything new to add. This can add scrutiny and improvement and inclusion of updated facts (good) but can also cause pointless rehashing and lack of progress to the frustration of long term topic editors (bad). It can also mean a newcomer with a good point is silenced due to impatience that they were not aware of nor responsible for (bad).

Proposed framework

Three key targets:

1. A way to bring specific points to a process that examines genuine hard content questions productively and narrows down or answers the problem, but without fossilizing or helping gamers.
2. A way to make more/better use of multi-stage dispute resolution methods, also easier and earlier. (Used as well or instead of #1)
3. A way to put the brakes on users who "fly under the radar" by impeding good discussion in a way that makes it hard to block them (eg civil edit warriors), and on disputes involving so many heavily-involved users that little progress towards resolution gets made over years (eg ethnic disputes)

Framework proposal #1 - Content review for genuinely hard issues

Users able to bring specific content points for independent evidence-based review, if all other routes fail.

• Talk pages often get distracted or fail. The review "rules" are designed differently to avoid that.
• Users present evidence related to the content issue (not related to past debates, behavior, personalities etc).
• Only the highest standard of contribution is allowed, eg speaking on content issues only, examining evidence only, asking questions intended to clarify concerns or points of fact/evidence, and making succinct (non-essay) points related to policy or best practice only.
• Page header states that anyone meeting certain standards (eg mainspace edit count, GA/FA, no recent blocks) can contribute but users who can't or won't discuss to a very high standard , may be asked to contribute on the review's talk page only.
• The aim is to set rules that gain high quality discussion by experienced users - including a high proportion of uninvolved users - who can be shown the actual evidence on the content point rather than endless dispute history, and who collaborate to analyze that evidence and ask questions, and clarify their thinking to the disputants.
• The outcome is that disputants get a high quality review of the content related evidence, which can be taken back and used to help settle the dispute - but is only binding in the sense that it's an independent and high quality review.
• Future questions on the topic can be resolved by pointing to the discussion of evidence, or by adding a new section to reopen the debate on specific new points of evidence if editors can't solve it on the talk page. So content isn't fossilized or "dictated by edict", but also isn't endlessly rehashed in the absence of new evidence.

Framework proposal #2 - Making multi-stage dispute resolution more accessible

Users able to get proper uninvolved help to set up and operate a good quality multi-stage DR process. We have seen these used on several big disputes already. They work.

• Relies on experienced users working neutrally together (maybe part of MEDCOM or a separate WikiProject?) who help others with a dispute to set design, set up, and operate a decent DR process for their specific content concern, by listening and learning what the issues are and why it's stalled, and trying to help the participants to develop a way to resolve it (eg based on what's worked in other major issues)
• Users in a difficult content dispute could disagree on the content but agree they are getting nowhere and agree to ask for help to design a good quality DR process. The request would be something like, "This is a major and messy dispute, we agree we need a proper DR process but we can't agree on one or don't know how to operate one. Please help"
• The role of the "helping" users would be to help disputants build consensus for a process that gets enough "buy-in" to be helpful (eg to frame the issue, agree what questions need asking, agree any "rules" for the discussions, then hold a discussion with agreed "rules" etc)
• May work or may not, but this is how many "heavy" disputes like naming disputes actually get resolved after years of arguing, so worth making it more accessible.

Framework proposal #3 - Keeping "skilled disruptors" and "mass involved participant issues" from damaging content progress

Two possible avenues:

• The line between disruption and good faith lack of skill or advocacy is hard to draw. Disputes often flounder because our criterion for removing a user is that they are egregiously causing a problem. If the rule was flipped in some disputes, that users had to contribute to a visibly high standard of conduct (as seen by uninvolved user consensus) to stay in the debate, and not just "avoid egregious bad conduct", or there was a "one warning and courteously asked to leave the page for 24-48 hours without a block" rule for some disputes, then a lot of disputes would vanish because people would start to realize anything but good content-focused conduct just got them excluded. It would make tendentiousness or ad hominem much harder to get away with.

• Good quality content tends to be more stable and less polarized. Articles with perennial disputes drive away exactly the skilled editors who could help improve the content. An option would be to develop a way to identify users the community trusts in content disputes - users who have shown a high level of editing skill and capability, very good respect for policy, not prone to POV or gaming, good on both conduct and content, fair, etc etc. In effect "trusted content editors" - people we know from their past editing will consistently edit content well, neutrally, and with good conduct. We have easily hundreds or thousands of such users, enough to make this work. Such users could be given exclusive editing of the article for a month, then it handed back to the wider community/previous participants to take it over again. It won't stay perfect, but being put into good shape by good quality editing that reflects multiple views neutrally and acknowledges issues, will reinvigorate it, and makes it much easier for regular users to maintain.

Together these would make a massive improvement to content issues, possibly including some of the worst, and avoid the risks of "binding content arbitration". FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 15:15, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

• We certainly do need a workable process for content dispute resolution. Options that I can think of are (1) to set up authority figures who chair, guide, steer, or decide, as FT2 suggests (will we elect these people?), or (2) to have a fixed-duration centralised discussion framework, which would resemble XFD discussions, to be closed by administrators based on community consensus. Either way would lead to a quicker and more final decision on content matters, which I think is the outcome we want.—S Marshall T/C 00:12, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

• Many moons ago I came up with a proposal for a circuit of lower courts under the authority of the Arbitration Committee, run by a single judge (or some other title) who could adjudicate content disputes by fiat, using a set of criteria laid down by Arbcom. Those decisions could then be appealed to the full Committee, and the lower court justices would be elected by the community and could be removed by Arbcom at any time (and easily). Obviously this is modeled after the US civil justice system. It has the advantage that it could lighten the load of Arbcom (because they can reject appeals where it looks like the case is straightforward and the lower court arbitrator did his or her diligence, plus the lower court arbitrator would have already done the clerking work of making the dispute legible to committee members), which means that more disputes could be put into the Arbitration phase, and earlier. That would provide binding content dispute resolution that supports the efforts of good-faith editors who don't back down from trolls. We'd probably have to delete
  WP:BURO if we did that, though. causa sui (talk
  ) 19:17, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Would an admin assess the consensus in this discussion? Thanks, Cunard (talk) 22:44, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I have a feeling that there hasn't been enough discussion to do much here, which is a shame. But not much that can be done, if there's a lack of interest.

^{The clock is ticking....}

23:24, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Many thoughtful proposals have been raised here (in this subsection alone, the proposals by FT2, S Marshall, and causa sui are very innovative). There was likely a lack of interest in this discussion because there was not a well-defined proposal about what changes to implement.

This discussion's purpose was to elicit ideas about how to change the content dispute resolution structure. If you are still interested in implementing one or more of the proposals here, I recommend that you create a page dedicated to discussing them and ask the editors who have participated in this discussion to help you form (a) well-defined proposal(s) for change. Solicit more proposals and opinions via

WP:CENT, it will likely garner much higher user turnout and interest. Cunard (talk

) 04:34, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Can anybody create or does a tool exist that can check all revisions of an article and identify when a particular string of characters appears in the article, preferably checking the revisions in reverse chronological order? That means from the current revision the tool should check backwards through all prior revisions and identify the first revision, where the string does not appear and then output the previous revision (which necessarily would be the first revision, where the string was introduced). Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 13:21, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

History → Revision history search. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 13:24, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I think this is what you are looking for, http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/blame/ GB fan 13:25, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Hmh, thanks for the replies. When I enter AB Album 2010 into the text search field for the article Ahmed Bukhatir I get this diff by Yobot. However then inserting AB_Album_2010.jpg finds what I need. What an awesome tool. Thanks a million. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 13:40, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

There is also this: http://wikipedia.ramselehof.de/wikiblame.php.

Helder

14:01, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Much appreciated. Toshio Yamaguchi (talk) 14:11, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

At present there is a discrepancy on the way villages and other types of unincorporated localities are treated. For some countries, articles on villages are accepted, for other countries they are not, even when there is no major difference in the administrative setup. It does not make sense for instance, to accept articles and categories for villages in Bulgaria, Bangladesh, Botswana, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine and not for Romania, Moldova or Serbia. Even if villages are not independent administrative entities, they are separate settlements and should be accepted as subjects for separate articles. There is no reason why an unincorporated locality such as McLean, Virginia should be accepted as subject for an article and Veneţia de Jos, Braşov (which is first documented in 1235) should be excluded. These are only examples. The issue is that all settlements (villages) should be accepted as subjects for articles, regardless of the country in which they are located. A unitary approach should be adopted for the entire en:wiki. Treating the locatities of different countries in different ways only creates conclusions.Afil (talk) 16:52, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

???? Based on the consensus demonstrated at numerous

AfD discussions, every geographic location or entity that has a name and a verifiable location is suitable for inclusion as a topic of an article in Wikipedia. Who told you otherwise? --Orange Mike | Talk

17:15, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

If I'm reading you correctly, your using McLean, Virginia as an example of a place without an article? Monty₈₄₅ 17:32, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

On the contrary, I was quoting it as a place with an article as opposed to others for which the articles have been deleted.Afil (talk) 18:13, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

So have you tried actually creating these articles only to have the deleted/merged or is it that they don't exist? If the letter, then

go make them. Just because something hasn't been done doesn't mean "it's not accepted". ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk

) 18:20, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

The problem started in some articles on villages which I have posted and which have been deleted being replaced by redirects. I also designed a template for the communes to which the villages are administratively subordinated. This lead to a dispute on the talk page of Template:Beceni, Buzău where a fellow wikipedian considered that even if Romanian villages have a name and a location, they should not have their own articles. The discussion was getting heated and I had no proof of what the accepted policy of Wikipedia was. As the discussion was getting nowhere, and each of us was sticking to his guns, I am trying to find out what is agreed upon, if there is a consensus on the matter (or to generate a discussion if the matter was not agreed upon. It is definitely a matter of not accepting articles on Romanian villages and this view has been advocated by my opponent. I don't want to argue indefinitely but simply know what is correct and what is not correct.

And I fail to understand why a template which lists the compunent villages of a commune and tthe neighboring communes should be deleted because the villages are irrelevant.

Afil (talk) 18:30, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

As I am the user in question, I would like to clarify why Romanian (and Moldovan) villages are (and should be) covered under the articles of the parent communes to which they belong, as well as through redirects to those articles, rather than as separate articles:

1) Rather than have 13,000 permanent stubs, it seems far preferable to have 3000 (mostly) stubs that can be expanded; having eternal and virtually identical stubs floating about is not a goal of Wikipedia. If an article has no chance to get to FA status, it shouldn't exist; this is the case for Romanian villages, but not communes, and even if villages did make FA, they'd necessarily overlap greatly with the commune articles, or else the latter would remain empty shells, with relevant material in the village articles. Multiple articles on essentially the same topic are by nature redundant and cumbersome as well. Would readers want to have several small articles to look through, all of them assuming that the readers already know how one article relates to the other, or do they want a single, reasonably long coherent article that answers most questions in one place? Because you can make a coherent article on a locality of 1,000 people if you don't decide to make ones about each of its individual parts.

2) In 95% of cases, commune A will have villages A, B, C, etc. How do we distinguish village A from commune A in two separate articles, and more to the point, why take that pedantic step, a step tantamount to

content forking

?

3) The standard Romanian encyclopedic dictionary of 1978 stops at the commune level. Yes, I know we're not paper, but this still matters.

4) Villages don't have administrative powers; communes do. Again, I know this isn't determinative, but it's another factor.

I'd like to emphasize that I have never sought to delete articles on villages, but to merge and redirect them, so please let's stop right here with charges of "deletion". Whatever relevant content there is on them should be added, but I (and others; this isn't just my opinion) simply think this material should be in the commune article, not split up. I'd also like to note that another discussion (in which I took no part) decided not to have articles on the barangays of the Philippines, so such a step is not without precedent. And that it's possible a more logical structure could be devised for organizing villages in Bulgaria or Bangladesh or Botswana, but the important thing, as I see it, is to have consistency within countries rather than across them. There are almost 200 countries on earth, and terms like "village" or "commune" or "county" mean different things in different places, so it seems absurd to try for one standard that fits all. (Moreover, I'm afraid referring to other countries is untenable: what we have is articles on the smallest self-administrating units of each country, which Romanian villages are not. A Romanian village is a the equivalent of a commune quarter, which makes it have unparalleled status and border on zero relevancy for this project as a whole.) Involved editors happen to have thought up a standard that fits Romania and Moldova quite well, and there's no reason to discard it. - Biruitorul ^Talk 22:31, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree - certainly every spot on a map should be mentioned on Wikipedia, but there has to be a level below which we don't necessarily create separate articles for each of them (unless there's something especially interesting about a particular spot). In many countries which have "commune"-like units, that seems a good level to use for article separation. (Entities below that level are likely to be more like hamlets than real villages.) Similarly, civil parishes in England (where they exist), and sołectwos in Poland, seem to be the right sort of level to make separate articles. (We need to consider how we represent the coordinates of subvillages, though - this should be done in such a way that they can still be exported to external map applications.)--Kotniski (talk) 08:05, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I think this is a case of deciding on organization rather than actual text. No one is questioning whether or not information at Wikipedia regarding such villages should be included; I see nothing wrong with keeping such information around. Whether it makes more sense to organize it into seperate articles, or to collect it into larger articles covering multiple villages within a larger administrative unit; well, that is the sort of thing that needs to be taken on a case-by-case basis, and needn't be decided by any all-encompassing policy for the whole 'pedia. Instead, use common sense, and decide what situation calls for what sort of organization. It is not insulting or unfair that many small articles are redirected to a larger, omnibus article if such method makes for better reading. No one is deleting anything, and if that works to make Wikipedia easier to use, then go with that! If, perchance, more information were to be found regarding certain villages, then it could be spunout into a larger article. But there's nothing wrong with merging these articles, so long as the information is preserved. --Jayron32 19:32, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

The discussion is presented incorrectly by User:Biruitorul. If you look at his discussion regarding Template:Beceni, Buzău. he specifically states that ALL articles on villages in Romania and Bulgaria should be replaced by redirects. There is no reference on the contents - even if the information is sufficient to justify an independent article it still should be merged into the article on the commune. This is incorrect.

What I am objecting to is setting a different rule for any country as opposed to a general rule applicable to the entire Wikipedia. We cannot have country-specific rules. If we do dont want stubs or small articles for inincorporated localities, this should be specified. Any rule which is applied only to a certain group, country, nationality etc. constitutes a discrimination. If we accept the views advocated by user:Biruitorul they should be equally applicable to Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary etc.

Some arguments simply do not hold water, for instance the fact that villages do not have administrative powers. It is not a factor at all. It it was, we would not have an article on McLean, Virginia, who has absolutely no administrative powers.

In conclusion, I consider that all countries are to be considered equal and that no single country should be the object of a separate discriminatory rule which is not applicable to the rest of the world. This is the issue I have raised and which should be addressed. Afil (talk) 20:07, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I said nothing about Bulgaria. As for Romania, yes, I support merging and redirecting articles on villages, and indeed I've done it for all 13,000 of them. As Jayron notes, an extra-long article on a village could conceivably be split off, but we're nowhere near that stage yet. When we have information on a Romanian village sufficient to justify an independent article, I'll be pleasantly surprised.

In fact, we very well can have country-specific rules; see for instance

WP:CFORK

are more than sufficient to handle this situation.

On the contrary, villages' lack of administrative powers is a factor: we're talking about places with hundreds or even tens of inhabitants that don't even have their own mayor and local council, and that are in fact informal, often undefined or vaguely defined districts of communes. We absolutely should (and, thanks to me, do) mention them at the articles of the communes they belong to, and redirect for accessibility (again something I've done), but splitting them off would only create redundancy and confusion. After all, would readers want to have several small articles to look through, all of them assuming that the readers already know how one article relates to the other, or do they want a single, reasonably long coherent article that answers most questions in one place? As for McLean: let's not compare a city of 50,000 with commune quarters of a few hundred residents.

Just so participants can get a concrete idea of what we're talking about, please have a look at a well-developed article on a Romanian commune,

Sfânta Elena and Coronini Commune

. (This is what they do on Romanian Wikipedia...) The first two would split the content roughly in half, while the third would be a pretty empty shell. Now, in all honesty, isn't the suggestion a little absurd? Why take a nicely written, coherent article on a single entity and cut it into pieces on a whim, in the process dispersing and reduplicating content? Because one editor thinks it's "anti-Romanian discrimination" not to have three articles where we easily can have one?

And your final point is more of the same

ignoratio elenchi. Having a particular arrangement for how we deal with one country's geographical subdivisions does not mean we consider it less "equal" or that we "discriminate" against it (that word again!). Just as we don't have articles on the smallest units in the Philippines or (as Kotniski helpfully informs us) Poland, there's a logical stopping point for Romania as well, and that's the commune. - Biruitorul ^Talk

21:37, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

You do not understand me correctly. What I am opposing is discrimination of any kind. I would consider it equally offensive if we advocated a rule which for whatever reason (let's ssay because the names exceed 20 characters) would exclude Welsh names from Wikipedia. I would consider it offensive to propose a rule which for whatever reason would exclude some Israeli entities from Wikipedia.

I am also opposed to hidden discrimination i.e. of designing criteria which would have the effect of eliminating a certain category.

This is a general principle which should be followed by Wikipedia in all cases. There should bbe no rule which is applicable only to a single nationality, ethnicity, country, religion etc. And no pretext which would have the effect of singling them out should be acceptable.

If there is a rule which says that "every geographic location or entity that has a name and a verifiable location is suitable for inclusion as a topic of an article in Wikipedia" it is not acceptable to add "except in Romania or Moldova". Even if some pretext are presented to explain why this exception should be accepted.

It would be non-discriminatory to indicate that information regarding these locations should be included in articles with more comprehensive subjects, to put certain conditions on when stubs are not acceptable as long as they are applicable to the entire world and not to a certain country, geographic area, nationality etc. I am not against such rules, as long as they are not defined in a discriminatory way or do not have hidden discriminatory effects.

But a rule which excludes only geographic entities in Romania and Moldova is discriminatory and anti-romanian (especially as it targets the only two Romanian-speaking countries in the world), just like a rule which would exclude geographic entities in Africa would be a racial discrimination and the exclusion of geographic entities in Israel would be antisemitic.Afil (talk) 22:18, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

• Established practice throughout Wikipedia is that there should be individual articles. The only related instances where any discussion at AfD has ruled otherwise is in cases where the real existence cannot be proved, cases where the proposed village actually is a single non-notable isolated house or farm, where the name is not a community but just a non-notable housing development of some sort being given a distinctive name by the proprietor and only the proprietor, and --most often -- for the neighborhoods of a city where the name is not an official designation and not used in a specific and reproducible way with sources other than real estate advertisements. For the examples you give, the smaller included locations are separate settlements in the sense we use it here, and should unquestionably have separate articles. Unfortunately we have no final way of settling questions like this except to make it a question of deletion and take it to AfD. We've frequently held that if an AfD closes as a keep, and the discussion includes the possibility of a merge, and the closing specifies in accord with consensus that it not be a merge, that a subsequent merge is improper. As for the applicability in a specific country, I do not think that discrimination would normally have anything to do with it, but rather the question of consistency. Trying to do it differently for a particular country would be like saying that any other eneral guideline hilds, except for a particular area.

With respect to the arguments: 1/the number of stubs is irrelevant., We can accommodate any number of small articles just as well as large ones. There will always be something specific to talk about in the geographical section & almost always the historical also. 2/ if commune A has villages A, B, and C, this is no different from a country or province A having cites A, B, and C. We simply distinguish in the heading. 3/How the country's standard gazetteer limits itself is irrelevant if we have sources. / Administrative powers are irrelevant if they are known to be distinct and defined communities. There's another argument; The individual parts in a long-settled country normally have separate origins and were once independently administered at some point, before a later organization. Any historical village gets an article here just as does a current one. Using the very example given, the individual villages in Coronini do in fact have this earlier clear separation, and have not only different dates of formation, but different histories and ethnic compositions. I think it a very clear case for why we have sand should have eparate articles. DGG ( talk ) 22:39, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

DGG, what you write about AfD is not especially relevant, given that no one here has proposed deletion, but merger and redirect have instead been applied. I will also note that all the information on a village can easily fit into an article on a commune, and the redirects were mostly done with that in mind. The village is not an administrative subdivision of any kind, and, if anything, functions as an informal section of a commune, when the commune itself only hosts thousands of inhabitants at best. No matter how much one would expand the article on a village, the info would still not be too much not be featured nicely in the relevant commune article; the opposite will result in articles which either say the same thing or of which at least one is forced to remain a stub (the commune article, which in that scenario would only say "x commune has x, y, z villages"). All of the information would be segregated along impractical lines.

This would specifically happen with Coronini: sure, the two villages have their own histories, but they also happen to be part of the same administrative unit, and having one article on each and then one on the commune will necessarily result in duplication and one permastub, when now, all the content is under one coherent umbrella, and anyone happening to search for

Svatá Helena) will effortlessly find it. - Biruitorul ^Talk

23:25, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations, Afil: you managed to use "discrimination" seven times in your last post, as well as throwing in "offensive" twice, and "anti-Romanian" for good measure. I hope people continue to ignore this nonsense, but just in case, let me state for the record that I am a patriotic Romanian who simply has a more logical approach to presenting the country's geography on Wikipedia — not that who I am should have any bearing on the discussion, but I don't want casual observers to get the wrong idea about my motivations based on Afil's tireless repetition of the same baseless canard.

At this point in the discussion I think we've established that all named places should be mentioned and accessible (which they are for Romania and Moldova), but how exactly this is approached will necessarily vary from country to country, given the plethora of administrative systems in existence. The strength of this encyclopedia lies in its pragmatism: there are some general rules for all to follow, but it's quite common that particular subjects are tackled on a case-by-case basis, and it would be counterproductive to have a policy covering Romania and Peru and Malawi and Tuvalu and Burma and North Korea stating what sorts of places need separate articles. It would be more enlightening if instead of complaining of "discrimination... discrimination... discrimination", you'd actually delve into the details of this, like how you'd approach

WP:CFORK; but maybe that's too much to ask. - Biruitorul ^Talk

23:25, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I consider that we can only agree to disagree. The discussion had been carried out long enough. You may stick to your guns and I to mine. I am not complaining about anything, I simply stated that I do not like any kind of rule which implies discrimination in any way. And this means singling out some elements which are not subject to a generalized rule. Once a general rule has been agreed upon then we can discuss any details you wish. But coming up wwith any detailed examples cannot cover the main issue which I have raised, that the rule must be applicable to all countries of the world, without exception. If we talk about pragmatism, this would imply accepting articles for nonincorporated localities - wherever they are located - if there is sufficient information to justify an article and to recommend incorporating the information in more comprehensive articles (covering the municipality, commune, upazilla or whatever may be the case). What I am objecting to is the general rule you want to establish that in the case of Romania and Moldavia ONLY, unincorporated villages should not have articles. All your lengthy discussion and claims to patriotism - which has nothing to do with this issue - just avoids the issue. Afil (talk) 21:58, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I only mentioned my patriotism because I didn't want others to buy into the false charges of "discrimination"; I'm not that self-absorbed to think it normally matters. Interestingly, France seems to be another country treated much the same as Romania and Moldova: we have articles on the French communes, but the villages in France category mainly contains communes as well. Anyway, when "sufficient information to justify an article" about a Romanian village turns up, I'll be pleasantly surprised. At present, that day seems far off.

And if we're going to talk about avoiding the issue, the crux of the matter is not "discrimination" or the alleged need to create a single standard covering geographical entities in all ~200 countries on Earth, but how we structure information logically and present it to readers in an accessible fashion, keeping in mind

WP:CFORK. As I've said before, it makes far more sense to present information on villages A, B and C of commune A in one article, "A", rather than disperse and duplicate it into articles "A", "B", "C" and shell article "Commune A", while expecting readers to look through all four (even assuming they know how they're related). Perhaps you can address that point, preferably without using the word "discrimination" or calling for a generalized rule on the topic. - Biruitorul ^Talk

00:59, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

It's clear that at least some editors don't agree with your merging activities. Yet when I look at for example the revision history of Hoghiz, there's an edit marked merging on 5 september,

• but no notification of a merge proposal, no proposal on the talk page, or reasons given, arguments or any discussion.
• No edit summary noting merge content from [[SOURCEPAGE]] , "a step required in order to conform with
  Help:Merging
• In the edit summary of Cuciulata, once again only the word "merging", despite the clear instruction: Save the source page with an edit summary noting merge content to [[DESTINATIONPAGE]] .

So you seem to be telling us that you've ignored wikipedia guidelines, policies and rules, over ten thousand times? That could be a new record... DS Belgium ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶ 10:22, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

The number of "articles" (we'll call them that, even though they usually didn't come up to any basic standards) I actually merged was roughly two dozen of 10,000. The remaining 9,975 or so never existed as articles; I simply created redirects for them and added mention of their existence at the commune articles. And don't forget Moldova, where I did the same thing for about 1,000 villages; the number of pre-existing "articles" there was about 5.

I've fixed the problem regarding Hoghiz/Cuciulata; thank you for pointing that out.

This was not a unilateral step, but rather was discussed by a number of interested editors. I actually do think a reasonable reader, rather than having several small articles to look through, all of them assuming that the reader already knew how one article relates to the other, would prefer a single, reasonably long coherent article that answers most questions in one place. And this is not the only justification; I've outlined several, the main point being that informal commune quarters without administrative capacity border on negligible notability, and that it's sufficient to fold them all into the same article rather than spreading them out in several disparate, duplicating directions. And I repeat: if we take article A on Commune A with villages A, B and C, and if we split it into four articles ("A", "B", "C" and "Commune A"), the last of these will have essentially nothing to say, except what its villages are and what its population, ethnic and religious composition are — at best three lines of text. ("A", "B" and "C" are also going to be very short in most cases.) Whereas by covering everything in one place, including history, geography and so forth, we at least have a chance to develop a "well-written, comprehensive, well-researched" article. - Biruitorul ^Talk 15:48, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

The discussion mentioned is probably Wikipedia:Romanian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 10. However no consensus has been reached and in the conclusions of the discussion, drawn by User:MariusM he indicates the pros and cons of the various alternatives and concludes that small villages should not be excluded as having potential separate articles. The discussion was held in 2007.

To define the problem in Romania communes are territorial units - not settlements. By law, there are four types of settlements in Romania:cities, towns, villages which are commune seats and villages which are not commune seats. This type of setup is valid for most countries in the world, where the lowest level territorial units have a number of settlements of which one is the seat of the territorial unit.

Is is therefore interesting to present how Wikipedia has dealt with the problem in other countries.

Let us take, for instance, the Commonwealth of Virginia. The lowest level of administrative unit in Virginia is the county. As an example Culpeper County, Virginia has a separate article presenting the administrative unit (county). The seat of the county is Culpeper, Virginia which is a town with a population of 9664 inhabitants, which is of the same order of magnitude of some of the seats of communes in Romania. Culpeper, Virginia is a different article and is not included in the county article. The county has several unincorporated communities, some of them, for which information is available, having their own articles, for instance: Richardsville, Virginia. Though it is only a stub, it has a separate article and the available information regarding Richardsville is not merged into the county seat or county article.

Looking at another country, let us take the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. The state is divided into "Kreise" (Districts) which in turn are divided into "Ämter" which are the lowest level of territorial units. Each Amt has several settlements, called °Gemeinde" (which would be correctly translated as community, but for wich en:wiki has preferred the name of municipality). Let us take the Amt of Leezen (Amt) which has its own article. The seat of the Amt has is Leezen, which is a settlement of 1700 inhabitants. which has a separate article. All the other communities of the Leezen Amt have their own articles, for instance Wittenborn, Bark, Germany, Neversdorf etc. Most of these Gemeinden have populations of a few hundred inhabitants and the articles are mostly stubs.

The argument user:Biruitorul presents could be made both for Virginia, for Schleswig-Holstein and for the great majority of states or countries in the world. However, as it has been established that "every geographic location or entity that has a name and a verifiable location is suitable for inclusion as a topic of an article in Wikipedia" and if this rule has been applied for other countries, as indicated in the examples presented above. I see no reason why we should make the argument made by user:Biruitorul which is applicable only to a single country and not stick to the rule which has been applied everywhere else. The argument made by Biruitorul may have its merits - what is does not explain is why the situation is different in Romania from the example presented in Germany, which is basically identical. Especially, as even for Romania, the old discussion mentioned has not reached a consensus. Afil (talk) 19:51, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

According to the Romanian Constitution (Article 3, Section 3): "The territory is organized administratively into communes, towns and counties. Some towns are declared municipalities, according to the provisions of the law." The Constitution says nothing about villages. The relevant law (Law 2 of 1968) does mention that communes are made up of "one or more villages", but Romania (unlike perhaps Virginia or Germany) lends itself well to stopping at the commune level. Why? Well, simply for the reasons I've stressed above over and over. I'm glad you've dropped the claim of discrimination; even if it happened to strike you as such, my motives are only with the best of intentions. As I see it, the important thing is not to try and force the same standard onto Romania and Germany and France at the same time, but to do what's most practical in each case. And covering information on parts of communes under the umbrella of their commune will surely make for more coherent articles (if these ever materialize; precious little has happened on that front since 2007), rather than slicing and reduplicating for no particular reason, given that the villages are still accessible to all looking for them.

I'm also aware that we can't do something completely separate from the rest of Wikipedia for Romania and Moldova only. But the fact is that for many countries, we do seem to stop at the smallest self-administering unit: a quick perusal showed that Algeria, Guinea, Mali, Spain, Iceland, Cambodia, and by and large Italy and France all seem to fall into this pattern. So in fact, the way we now cover Romania and Moldova seems not that unusual.

About the Leezen example: does having a dozen one-line stubs, where the content could all be covered in one place, actually improve the encyclopedia? If so, how?

For the record, I disagree that 9664 is "of the same order of magnitude of some of the seats of communes in Romania". I believe Holboca is the largest commune in Romania, at 11,662 people. With seven villages, that's 1666 inhabitants per village. Of course, some of those villages will be larger than that, but probably not too much. The average village (10,139,000 rural inhabitants ÷ 13,285 villages) has 763 residents. Some have just a handful, or even 0. - Biruitorul ^Talk 04:02, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I would not compare the villages of Romania with the ones of Guinea. I have worked in countryside of both countries and there are few similarities. Have you ever seen a village in Guinea or Mali?

Just for the record. The component villages of the commune of Holboca are: Holboca (2689 inhabitants), Dancu (7225 inh), Orzeni (752 inh), Cristesti (643 inh), Rusenii Vechi (673 inh), Rusenii Noi (375 inh), Valea Lungă (281 inh).

The biggest village of the commune has 7225 inhabitants which is obviously of the same order of magnitude as the 9664 inhabitants of Culpepper.

I was presenting the comparison whith the amt of Leezen in Germany and its component villages who all have articles in en:Wiki. The entire Amt has 8516 inhabitants. The various villages have: Bark 1003, Bebensee 608, Fredesdorf 385, Gross Niendorf 683, Hogersdorf 405, Leezen (Amt seat) 1700, Mozen 461, Neversdorf 103, Schwissel 254, Todesfelde 59, Wittenbord 825.

What is the difference which makes small villages having 59 or 103 inhabitants in Germany be acceptable and similar villages in Romania not to be worth having separate articles. These are actual examples. What makes Germany so much superior to Romania regarding the value of its settlements? If you look at the articles of the German villages, could you present an arguments as why the content of these articles justifies a separate article while the information on villages in Romania does not? Can you make a similar argument why the unincorporated settlements in Culpepper County which have articles (not all have) justify a separate article.

Regarding the villages, it is true that the Constitution of Romania does not mention villages, as it deals only with the territorial organization of the country. I have also indicated the communes are not settlements, but territorial units and that is how they are defined by the constitution. Settlements are classified by Law 351 of 6 July 2001 which indicates the various types of settlements and which lists villages which are county seats as rank IV settlements and villages and rank V settlements. Therefore, villages of various types are separate entities, recognized as such by law. This is not the case for unincorporated settlements which have no legal status. The frazione in Italy have just recently been granted some legal rights and even so, some frazione in Italy have their own articles. Anyway, in Romania, villages are legally separate units. And the law makes a distinction between communes which are territorial units and villages commune seats which are settlements. Obviously you can ignore both the similarity with Germany and the provisions of the Romanian legal system and create your own. But that does not make it right and correct.

In conclusion, my proposal of accepting separate articles for each entity is based both on the legal definition of these entities by the Romanian legal system and on an analogy with other similar cases for other countries in Wikipedia. Afil (talk) 22:41, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

No, I've never been to Mali or to Ghana, but that's not the point: the point is that you repeatedly claimed I somehow set a special precedent by excluding articles only on Romanian villages and stopping at the lowest self-administering unit, and this is wrong. The various countries I cited above, including several in Europe, disprove your contention.

Thank you for the data on Holboca. Naturally, some villages are extra large, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them become communes soon. Meanwhile, the same arguments apply: we may as well give readers access to the same information on the same related entities in one reasonably coherent whole.

Myself, I think it's absolutely silly to have one-line stubs on German villages that can be folded into the article on the next-level settlement. And I think it was thoughtless to have created them. I'm not going to get involved on anything related to Germany, but it was a bad idea.

All right, so villages are settlements; we knew that beforehand. That doesn't mean they're self-administering settlements, or that we don't stop there for a bunch of other countries, or that it doesn't make sense to do so for Romania. - Biruitorul ^Talk 02:38, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm 100% behind Afil on this one. See:

'Village ('Commune')

" with an infinite variety of infoboxes and category placements which will cause nothing but grief.

I know a lot of people hate stubs, but in cases like this, where we know that eventually we'll get to a stage where the articles start filling out, it's better just to create them now, in an organized manner, to speed up development and avoid future grief. Standardization is the key, and the forking method is not the way to achieve that.

Cheers, PhnomPencil (talk) 23:36, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

PhnomPencil, allow me to set a few things straight, if I may. I appreciate your concern about standardization and having a uniform approach. It's something I took quite seriously as I did this kind of thing, creating redirects for every single Romanian village, adding mention of those villages to their commune articles, making sure those articles, on every single Romanian commune, had uniform titles and (for the most part) structures. I really went through with a fine-tooth comb, and our coverage of Romanian settlements is a little less chaotic and a lot more complete than it was a year ago. (To give just one example about titles: someone who probably didn't bother checking how we title Romanian communes moved Bobota to

Bobota, Romania upon creating Bobota, Croatia. While working on the villages, I moved it to Bobota, Sălaj

, where it belongs - commune, county.)

That we don't have much content on Romanian villages is indeed because no one's added it, but that we don't have articles on them is the result of a conscious decision on the part of several interested editors, implemented by me. Anyone interested will still be able to find them, just under the heading of their respective communes. And anyone wishing to add relevant content is also able to do so under the current structure. I've done it myself in one or two places and it really works out quite nicely.

So we do have a highly standardized approach to Romanian (and Moldovan) geography as of right now. It happens to stop at the lowest self-administrating level, but it makes accessible the next level (i.e., the village) and encourages (one hopes) the addition of content on them. As for forking, well, I won't ask you to wade through everything I wrote, so let me repeat it. When you have Commune A with villages A, B and C, you can cover everything in one place, as we do now, in an article that has the potential to become well-developed, and where readers know precisely how the various settlements relate to one another. Or you can split it up into four disparate bits ("A", "B", "C" and "Commune A"), where there would inevitably be forking, and where at least one ("Commune A") and probably others would inevitably remain stubs in perpetuity. I think there's something to be said for the former approach, don't you? - Biruitorul ^Talk 02:38, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly endorse Biruitorul's approach above, being one of the first to propose it (let me add, contrary to what is claimed above, that there was consensus on this: the few objections came from editors canvassed from Romanian wikipedia, who were quick to proclaim that a "massacre" of Romanian villages was in the making, etc.). Now, I want to be very clear about this: nobody is suggesting not to have info on the villages themselves, but what is noted is the need to fit that info into an accessible standard, make it the least redundant and most informative. There is absolutely no practical use to splitting the info on a small locality into its even smaller divisions, particularly since the core info is utterly redundant and confusing; there is even less cause to having these and a separate article on the commune, which would either duplicate the relevant info or simply function as a stubby list (commune comprises x, y, z villages").

As the precedents on Romanian wikipedia show, the only "merit" of separate articles on the villages is for various editors to propagate local patriotism, giving as much exposure to non-encyclopedic, unsourced, unverifiable or simply inane factoids of sub-commune importance. This applies to the largest of the villages, since those existing villages that only number in the hundreds or tens of inhabitants are likely to function as permastubs. In every case: get all the relevant info on all the component villages collected in one place, the commune article, and you'll have an article that: a) says it all; b) puts things in relation without sending the reader all over the place; c) can be kept clean and informative. Do the opposite, and you'll have loads of confusing rants, and loads of original research. One of my own contributions to sorting this out is Coronini: look over it, and tell if anything is confusing or missing.

Note that this also reflects issues of sourcing. By now, countless sources will mention, for instance, that x writer was born in y commune (leaving us to guess what village of that commune is his). Published monographs often deal with communes and specify villages in the same manner I propose. Add to this that, under Romania's own administrative system, villages are awarded no recognition, which means that we only call them units of something by uncodified tradition.

As for the suggestion that we should have separate articles on each and every geographical location: I find it unrealistic and indigestible. First, how does one define a geo location, and when is something not a geo location? Even in the case of Romanian villages, this issue is self-evident: villages sometimes have hamlets, or are divided into several parts (say, a Romanian and a Rom half), which have their own nomenclature. If it is proposed that we define geo locations after oral tradition, these subdivisions are also "geographical locations". Since neither them nor the villages are actually (still) codified by external norms, and since we have to assume that articles on communes are "not enough", then we might as well start work on every imaginable subdivision of a commune, or how else would we be serving our readers? Dahn (talk) 18:12, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Dahn is not totally correct. The Romanian legislation acknowledged villages which are not commune seats as a distinct type of settlements. Hamlets are not. Each commune has defined villages which are part of the commune and are officially listed as such. They do not cover hamlets or other types of settlements. There are not every imaginable subdivisions, but entities which are recognized by law.

But all this does not answer the basic question I have asked. What is the general Wikipedia policy regarding settlements? I have shown that for other countries, such as Germany, all settlements, even those having populations of under 100 inhabitants have their own articles. I have shown that unincorporated settlements in the Unites States, which also have no administrative recognition have their own articles. Now we have a discussion regarding villages in Romania and the Republic of Moldova. Tomorrow, somebody else might start a discussions on the villages of Hungary or Romania.

It does not make any sense that for situations which are extremely similar in various countries to adopt a different policy. Neither Biruitorul nor Dahn have answered this question. Maybe Biruitorul considers the case of the Leezen Amt in Germany and the component villages, which I have quoted above as making no sense. However, it exists in Wikipedia and is considered as complying with the general rules. Why would those rules not be applicable to the settlements in Romania. And if we have new rules for Romania, why would they not be applicable for other countries too. Just as Biruitorul has replaced articles for villages with redirects, why would we not make the same corrections for the villages of Leezen Amt and the rest of Germany as well as for Culpepper District and the other districts of the United States? The entire discussion does not answer this question. Afil (talk) 05:04, 22 October 2011 (UTC)